


Wound within a ribcage

by VespidaeQueen



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-19 23:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8229115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VespidaeQueen/pseuds/VespidaeQueen
Summary: A weapon, once broken, can be fixed.But that is not what he is.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The single line of all the Overwatch hero bios that I just can't shake is from Genji's:
> 
>  
> 
> _"Transformed into a living weapon, Genji single-mindedly set about the task of dismantling his family's criminal empire."_

Here is what he remembers, years later: white-hot pain, anger, agony. Things missing from where they should have been and a dragon curling frantically around his spine, desperately clawing and clinging to a life that should have ended.

He remembers motes in his eyes, clouded vision filled with little grey stars, trying to focus on something, _anything_ , only the rafters of the roof high above him. Pain turning to soft, cold quiet as though all the edges of his body were dissolving, as everything narrowed down and down until there was almost nothing.

_Almost._

_And then._

His clouded vision turns from fading grey to sunlight. To something warm and bright and _alive_. White wings and feathers made of light, they fill up his head, his eyes, everything left of his world.

A hand, stretching out to him. Everything turned gold and glittering.

He tries forcing a word past ruined lips. Tries and fails, throat too mangled, tongue too raw, jaw too shattered. The word catches in his chest, escapes him as no more than a gasp of air.

The world turns soft as he dies, and her words are soft, too. Like his head is stuffed full of cotton wool, like everything was fading away to silence. But, still, he hears her.

 _I am with you_.

This, he remembers.

***

He sleeps. He sleeps for a long time. He dreams little, and when he does everything is cold and sterile, lights bright and blinding.

A dragon winds around his spine and curls within his ribs. It draws breath into his tired lungs and pushes it back out of his throat.

_He sleeps._

***

Here is what he forgets, for too long: waking to voices, eyes too blurred at first to see more than indistinct shapes and colors.

Nothing is clear, except for sound.

 _His body is rejecting any organic tissue I try to transplant_.

He knows this voice, knows four words spoken to a dead man. She speaks softly, calmly, quietly - but he hears her, still.

_I am running out of options, Jack. I have reconstructed his jaw, but the rest of his body - perhaps with a compatible donor, I could do something -_

_We’ve discussed options_ , says a man. His voice carries, like he is used to being heard across long distances. He is commanding, sure of himself.

 _I will_ not _turn him into a weapon_. _I will_ not _, Jack._ She is suddenly harsh, she is suddenly brittle, she is suddenly angry in a way he will so rarely see in the years to come. He does not understand what she says then, not yet, but he will.

Slowly, so slowly, he turns his head.Tips it, towards the sounds, towards the voices he hears. Shapes reform, solidify. He sees a white coat and golden hair and blue gloves.

Blue gloves. Blue eyes.

They go wide. Lips part in surprise.

He gaze falls past her, over her shoulder. There are no wings.

He would swear she had wings.

***

The man in a blue coat - _Jack_. _Commander Morrison -_ explains. The options. The _option_. Singular, like there is no other. Like everything has been narrowed down to one inevitability.

He thinks it is - not ironic. Fitting, a path that cannot be deviated from, dangerous and as unyielding as the edge of a sword.

Through a synthetic jaw, with vocal cords that create distorted sounds within his throat, in a voice strange to his own ears, Genji says _yes_.

He does not consider consequences.

Not then.

***

She makes him into something new. Something terrible and strange. Synthetic muscle and metal joints and armor that sits upon his as though it is skin. Layers upon layers, intricate and complex and stronger than flesh and bone every was.

 _Is there any discomfort?_ she asks him, when he takes his first steps on new legs. _Please, let me know. There are adjustments I can make -_

 _I am fine_. He says it, but it is not true. Things coil in what remains of his gut, burn like acid within his stomach. Synthetic muscle expands and contracts; movement is easy, easier than he would have thought. Easy to move, but -

 _I am fine_ , he tells her, and her brow furrows and her lips press together and she knows he is lying but says nothing. She makes a note upon her tablet, asks him to continue to move, runs calculations and speaks of numbers and calibrations.

He looks at his left hand. Pulls his fingers towards his palm. Spreads them wide again to show smooth metal where skin once was.

He does not look at her.

***

 _As your doctor, I need to know if anything is wrong_ , she says, later, when he returns from an early mission with a scratch scoring the casing of his arm. It is ragged and raw; it does not hurt.

 _I am fine_. Each time he says it, it feels more falsehood. Each time he says it, he sees more and more clearly that she is not fooled. Each time her eyes grow softer, each time he looks away quicker.

_If there is anything I can do -_

_There is nothing_ , he tells her. It is true, then.

For a long time, there is nothing. Nothing, except anger and hate and sorrow etched into his bones.

***

For a long time, he is only this: a weapon.

It is a lie. But it is easier.

***

Sometimes, he wonders what would have been different, if he had told her. If he’d answered her questions with anything but lies. If he’d spoken to her of all the things that filled his mind, that wound themselves into his thoughts and wouldn’t leave him. If he’d talked of his pain and his anger and his doubt. Everything but his hate.

It is very easy to hate. It is easier than everything else.

***

There is a moment that he remembers long past, one that stings and cuts when he dwells upon it. It’s the sight of her face and the sound of her words, the fall of her hair over her face and the gentle curve of her cheek. The way her fingers curl upon his arm as she examines the frayed wires and ragged metal where his hand has been sheared away during battle.

 _It will take some time, but I can fix this,_ she tells him, but there is a tightness in her jaw that belies the softness of her voice. _We will need to construct a new hand, of course, but the joint will need some work as well. If you’d like, I could upgrade your arm._

 _Do as you’d like_ , he says, and her jaw tightens. She works upon his arms for some time in silence; her hair is like threads of gold and obscures her eyes.

 _I worry about how much damage you come back with,_ she says, eventually. It is not a reprimand, it is something else. It is something he doesn’t want to think about then, does not think about until much, _much_ later. _You must take care of yourself._

_If I am damaged, you will repair me._

_Of course I will. But I worry that you are hurt so often, and I -_

There is a heaviness in his chest, an ache within his ribcage.

_I am a weapon, Dr. Ziegler. Weapons can be fixed when broken._

She stills. Completely and utterly. Her fingertips are upon his mangled arm, and when she looks up at him it is with pity.

No. Not, it’s not pity.

 _Genji_ , she says. There is a quiet urgency to her voice, a hint of desperation. _You must remember that you are not a weapon._

 _I wish that were true_ , he tells her. _I am but what you made me_.

He is sharp and he is brittle and he cuts her as deeply as he can.

He remembers her face, in that moment. It is one thing he cannot forget.

***

But, even more, he cannot forget her words. They echo and the resound and they fill up his head in the silent moments of the morning when doubt and despair try to creep in.

_Not a weapon. Not a weapon. Not a weapon._

Then what is he?

***

An apology grows within his chest, tries to make its way up his throat, sits upon the tip of his synthetic tongue. It lingers there, waits, caught there like it doesn’t know how to be given voice.

There’s no good moment, until there is.

***

He loses his right arm near the end, before everything begins to crumble, before his tasks are done, before he cuts himself free of Overwatch. He loses his right arm, his only remaining limb, and it is the signal of an end. He almost bleeds out on the field, slumped against a wall, and there is a moment where he doesn’t care.

It could be over, and he doesn’t care.

But then there is sunlight and the rush of wings cutting through the air. The gentle glow, the static crack of her staff. Golden hair, golden halo.

_I have you, Genji. I have you. I am right beside you._

_I’m sorry_ , he says. She crouches before him, her gloved hands are upon his arm; she examines the damage with a clinical eye.

 _I am sorry,_ he says, and his head tips forward against her shoulder. He closes his eyes.

***

He leaves, not long after. A new arm, but he is even more machine than before. He is dissonant at his edges; there is a great hollow carved out in his chest that aches more and more each day, and he cannot bear it anymore.

He leaves, disappears, but she catches him before he is gone. He thinks - _expects_ \- that she will stop him, but she does not. There are things she does not say that, cannot - secrets that she holds onto and guards fiercely. Everything is crumbling, but he does not know it.

She does not tell him, merely smiles and takes his hand for a brief moment.

 _I will miss you, Genji_ , she tells him, and he does not understand how, he does not understand why.

_I...will miss you as well, Dr. Zielger._

It is, somehow, a truth.

***

There is something she tells him, one of the many things that does not leave him, does not escape. He thinks on it, in the days that he wanders, in the spaces in between where there is nothing but thought to accompany him.

_When you find your brother, do not kill him. Violence will always bring more violence._

He could not promise that, not then.

It was so easy to hate.

And then, it wasn’t.

***

He wanders for a long time, lost as he has been for years. Stumbling upon a path that seems to have only one destination, one that he cannot see and is not certain that he wants.

He wanders, until he finds another way.

***

 _We often find ourselves mired in hate and anger_ , his master says. They sit together, a fragile peace between them, not yet balance, not yet tranquility. _There is much in life to inspire such emotions. Yet you have sought my guidance to move past it._

 _I wish to heal,_ he tells him. _I wish to make peace with what I have become._

 _To heal from this, you must release your hate for yourself,_ his master says, and Genji shuts his eyes. _It is no easy task, and it will take time._

_You will help me?_

_Yes. I will_.

***

Sometimes, it can take so long to heal that the process seems endless. Years upon years; he was not ready, before.

One day, he wakes up to find that there is a stillness in him that he had not expected to find again. He sits in silence, almost startled by this, and he finds that he has, somehow, become calm.

***

“This doctor you speak of, do you hold hate for her, for what her actions resulted in?” his Zenyatta asks him, and he pauses. He tilts his head up to the sky and thinks of things bright and beautiful, sunlight that tried to shine where desperate darkness clung.

 _You are not a weapon_ , she had said, and he had not listened. It has taken him so long to listen.

“No,” he says, and this is a truth. “I do not hate her.”

He cannot.

It has taken him a long time to realize this as well.

***

When he sees her again, her face lights up with recognition and her lips pull into a smile that nearly blinds him. An old friend now, years having tempered what was rough and sharp between them, distance bringing clarity to all that had transpired. Something slides into place within his chest, recognizable in the stillness of his thoughts. She is as bright and golden as ever, but there is something different now.

 

“You seem well, Genji,” she says, and behind his faceplate he finds that he cannot help but smile.

“I am a different man now,” he tells her, instead of all the things that he could say. “I am whole.”

It is a truth.


End file.
